Army pulls general in adultery case

The Army suspended the commander of one of its main training centers on Tuesday amid allegations of adultery and “a physical altercation,” the service said.

Brig. Gen. Bryan Roberts, the commander of Fort Jackson in South Carolina — home to the basic training course that makes young recruits into soldiers — was removed from his duties as the investigation takes its course, an Army spokesman said.

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Although Roberts has been accused of adultery, which violates military regulations, officials do not consider his case to be connected with the rash of sexual assault accusations that have given the Pentagon a black eye and drawn the ire of Congress.

Brig. Gen. Peggy Combs, the commandant of the Army’s Chemical, Biological Radiological and Nuclear School at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, will serve in Roberts’s place “until the investigation is complete and the issue resolved,” the Army said.

Army spokesman Harvey Perritt told POLITICO that agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command were interviewing Roberts at Fort Jackson and that they were conducting an independent investigation, as opposed to a command investigation by Training and Doctrine Command, which oversees Fort Jackson.

Perritt said that although TRADOC commander Gen. Robert Cone had seen enough evidence to remove Roberts from his job, the investigation remained open.

“I need to make the point that we presume Gen. Roberts’ innocence until all the facts come to light, until he’s adjudicated otherwise,” Perritt said. “The second point I would make is that … you could see this as an example that the Army does not condone this kind of conduct that’s been alleged, that we treat all soldiers, regardless of rank, the same.”

Roberts’s official biography was pulled from Fort Jackson’s live website by Tuesday afternoon. According to a cached version, he is a 29-year veteran whose service includes assignments in Iraq, Germany, Bosnia, Washington and elsewhere.

The Defense Department has been under intense political pressure to crack down on sexual assaults after an official report showed it was on the rise and three separate investigations involving troops around the U.S. And even though Roberts’s case is not technically considered a sexual assault, the removal of the general charged with overseeing the Army’s boot camp appeared likely to worsen the military’s immediate public relations problem in Washington.